(444f) Respirator Cartridge Performance Testing for Chemicals of Potential Concern

To accurately assess the performance of respiratory protection cartridges under varying environmental conditions, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) have jointly developed a laboratory test system to test respirator cartridges commonly used at Hanford tank farms in Richland, Washington, USA. The goal of this program is to understand respirator effectiveness across a wide range of vapors/gases and concentrations. The Hanford Tank Farms has over 170 nuclear waste tanks that have varying vapor mixtures. For workers operating around those tanks, cartridge respirators are used to reduce potential health risks associated with chemicals of potential concern (COPC) in complex vapor mixtures. Laboratory testing will provide industrial hygiene professionals an understanding of the performance of respirator cartridges with these varying mixtures of COPC vapors under a range of environmental conditions. Respirator cartridge performance was tested under humid conditions at room temperature (gas flow rate of 102.5 L/min +/- 5%, a temperature of 20°C +/- 2°C and a relative humidity of 70% +/- 5%), as humidity can have a major influence on breakthrough times. We will present our recent results on the experiments where the performance of the MSA OptiFilter TL multipurpose respirator cartridge was tested against a gas mixture with varying chemical vapor concentrations of Ammonia, N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), N-Nitrosodiethylamine (NDEA), N-nitrosomorpholine, N-Nitrosopiperdine and formaldehyde. The breakthrough times can be used for establishing cartridge change out schedules for improving worker safety and operating conditions.